When face-to-face communications are not practical, people often rely on one or more technological solutions to meet their communications needs. These solutions typically are designed to simulate one or more aspects of face-to-face communications. Traditional telephony systems enable voice communications between callers. Instant messaging (also referred to as “chat”) communications systems enable users to communicate text messages in real time through instant message computer clients that are interconnected by an instant message server. Some instant messaging systems additionally allow users to be represented in a virtual environment by user-controllable graphic objects (referred to as “avatars”). Interactive virtual reality communication systems enable users in remote locations to communicate over multiple real-time channels and to interact with each other by manipulating their respective avatars in virtual spaces.
A successful communications system typically should have relatively low computational resource requirements so that realtime communications performance can be achieved using currently available computing devices and network bandwidth constraints. In addition, such a system typically should be implemented in a way that achieves high connectability between a variety of difference devices across diverse network topologies and provides appropriate control over the transports of streams to the communicating devices so that a desired communications experience can be achieved.